Several years back I had my first Hive which lasted 2 years, but failed in the winter leading up to its 3rd year. I had not harvested any honey, and left them to use their own resources; but in their final year I believe they wandered off foraging somewhere that was being sprayed with something toxic, since hundreds of bees were returning to the hive covered in a white coating, they would not enter the hive itself but just die outside at the entrance. Many many hundreds littered the floor.
That same winter they did not make it through.
I stopped beekeeping after that hive; and decided to explore and study some more before I would re-engage again. This time I have switched to Warré Hives from my previous system which was a single cavity horizontal setup from germany, The Warré Hive designed by Emil Warré is a setup that tries to respect the natural tendencies of the bee and to cooperate with her natural way of doing things. The old Hive got upcycled into a raised-bed.
Together with @kaliphae we are in the process of setting up 2 Warrés Hives, for which the first batch of bees will arrive in late April and the 2nd colony arrives in late May.
Here setting up a level base slightly tilted forward. This is the location of the first hive. They are both being filled with love during their construction so that they might be literal living sanctuaries and sacred temples. Living Altars of Nature in which live a Colony of Priestess & Priest Bees of the Sun.
A preview of the Hive in its designated location, not yet completed in this photo, together with @kaliphae we have added some creative touches to the hives to adorn their temple.
Anyways to the more interesting bit, we have also setup an inoculated tree stump with oyster mushrooms , and are attempting an edible mushroom patch as well with the leftovers from a lions mane grow*kit. But the reason for those is actually in favor of the bees, since after I had my first hive, I stumbled upon Paul Stamets work with Mushrooms and Mycelia,familiar with his name in relation to psylocibes only until then, but I believe it was an interview with Rogan in which he did a deep dive into all sorts of different aspects of his research which became a deep enhtusiasm with the subject of Bees and Mushrooms.
In which he mentioned the most profound thing I had ever heard, and that was that he had observed and demonstrated that bees seem to have a very strong symbiotic relationship with mushrooms. He discovered this by observing bees from his own private hive, dig through his mushroom patch to get to its underground mycelia, so as to be able to drink the liquid that oozes out of them. It's been a few years since I encountered that; and looking around, actively even searching for some apiary that is testing this out, finding none so far, the motivation to get another hive came because I am determined to test out what the availability of mushrooms actively growing in the garden might give them and also occasionally giving them a small amount of bee feed mixed with reishi mushroom extract for a start.
Stamets already has several studies that he has done, in which Reishi and several other Medicinal Mushrooms actually increased the lifespan of a single bee by a large factor while also acting as an essential part of their immune system enabling many of their detox pathways to become activated, and very importantly acting as anti-virals reducing the viral load of the colony to nothing over time.
While everyone seems to be waiting for some official product to be sold to them; to apply this knowledge. I realized this is quite easy to do.
So I will be preparing a Bee Feed 1:1 ratio Water to Sugar.
I have prepared a double extraction of dried home-grown Reishi Mushroom. Meaning I ground the dried Mushroom small, macerated it for over a month in 98% Neutral Grain Alcohol Food-Grade. Then I filtered out the mushroom from the alcohol tincture. I took those same filtered out mushrooms and boiled them for several hours in water. Then filtered that out; simmered it down; and mixed it with the alcohol tincture.
To make the Bee Feed, I will take my double-extraction tincture and first evaporate off the alcohol, I will do this by adding some water to it, then let it simmer down until I am confident there is no alcohol remaining, I will weigh the amount of liquid that I have.
Say I have 200 ml of Alcohol-Removed Tincture.
I might make 1kg of Bee Feed; using 900ml Water+100ml of Alcohol-Free Tincture + 1kg Sugar.
Mix thoroughly and now you can add it to your bee feeder for your hive.
Anyways I thought I would share, and hopefully there are some other beekeepers lurking around here; who might be interested in researching the subject, since it is fascinating that for so long we have been ignorant to the importance in terms of the symbiotic link of fungi and bees.
